US Industry Continued to Choose up Sides on The Issue of Liquefied Natural Gas Exports

US industry continued to choose up sides on the issue of liquefied natural gas exports Tuesday with chemical giant Huntsman announcing it was joining America's Energy Advantage, a new trade group dedicated to limiting gas exports from the US. 

The move comes hot on the heels of Dow Chemical's withdrawal Friday from the National Association of Manufacturers. 

"With no discussion of notification, NAM adopted a new position on this issue which places the interests of oil and gas producers above the interest of its ?manufacturer members?," Dow spokeswoman Nancy Lamb said. "For these reasons, Dow has chosen to withdraw from membership." 

NAM's new position is that it supports free and open markets and believes there is little danger of shortages of gas in the US as a result of the discovery of abundant shale resources. 

NAM's policy is similar to that of the American Chemistry Council, a petrochemical trade group. Midland, Michigan-based Dow said it is reconsidering its membership of that trade association. 

"The unfettered export of natural gas is widely understood to have serious implications for the cost and volatility of manufacturing feedstock prices," Dow's Lamb said. 

With lots of supply and relatively low gas prices, US chemicals makers are enjoying a cost advantage over their overseas competitors when manufacturing products using natural gas as a feedstock. 

"We think it very short-sighted and bad public policy to allow our nation's natural gas advantage to be stripped and sent overseas to build a new manufacturing base that would otherwise be built here in the US," Woodlands, Texas-based Huntsman CEO Peter Huntsman said in a statement. 

"Completely unfettered US exports may enrich a few LNG exporters in the short term, but real, sustained and broad-based growth in the US economy will come from a balanced approach that considers the needs of American manufacturers and consumers, and ensures that natural gas can be exported without undermining this emerging sunrise for American manufacturing and all the supporting industries and services," Huntsman said. "Our nation must not squander this opportunity." 

Utilities and petrochemical makers have lined up against unrestricted LNG exports while terminal developers, shipping companies and oil and gas producers are pushing for fewer restrictions on exports of the fossil fuel. 

The US Department of Energy will be issuing guidelines later this year regarding LNG exports to countries that do not have free trade agreements with the US, a group that includes most of the developed and developing world. Exports to countries with free trade agreements are already permitted. 

Only one company, Houston's Cheniere Energy has obtained permission to export to both categories of trading partners.